82 Quotes by Jim Carroll

Artists have nothing to do with the deranged, vaguely connected actions of a few celebrated nutcases.

I can't sing that well, but when punk-rock came along, it changed all that.

When I came back to New York, it was such a joke because I was always referred to as the pure young poet who wasn't in it for what he could get out of it. And all of a sudden, the pure young poet comes back... and I'm hanging out with the Rolling Stones.

It's easy to get by on a facade of fancy style, but sooner or later, people are going to see through it. I'm trying to be as honest as possible.

I should have stayed an athlete, body well-tuned, cruising around with my accountant in a Porsche, maroon and chrome.

It's always been the same, growing up in Manhattan... the idea of living within a giant archer's target... for use by the bad Russia bowman with the atomic arrows.

These guys were always saying, 'The minute you get onstage, it's great, no matter how much you're hurting.' But that didn't work for me. There were some nights I did not want to get out there.

Rock and roll kind of screwed up my voice poetically. I found myself having this 'Beat' voice in my poems. It was like this self-fulfilled prophecy because everybody was calling me this rock poet, this Beat poet.

I was always the young guy. And when you're successful when you're young, it leads to an arrested adolescence or something, y'know.